February 6, 2009

so I’m considering dropping this blog as I have tons more things to take up my time and I feel like I might be better suited to keeping track of my projects in a scrapbook but until I decide for sure, I thought I would post a couple of things that I did over the last couple (several really) months

These are most of the hats I made. The ones shown were done for my nephews, sons, and brother. I also made one for my grandpa and one for my father-in-law.

The snake scarves were made to go with all of the boys stocking caps (thought not for grandpa or Steve).

Not the best photo but I was wrapping after dark and the iron was not out. Anyhoo, I made two of these sets, one for each of Jim’s nieces. The dress is from a vintage pattern my grandma gave me and the booties were from the pattern I’ve mentioned in a previous post, I just altered the size a bit.

These scarf and hat sets were made for my niece and my sister.

I made these for Jim’s sister and sister-in-law. They were my first socks and really were not as hard as I had anticipated socks would be. I actually really enjoyed it. I much prefer patterns where I am doing something interesting to patterns where I knit the same thing over and over (like afghans….bleh!)

I have a couple more things that Jim and I made the boys but I can’t find where Jim posted the pictures so those will have to wait for a later date…..if that date comes. I am in the middle of doing a MAJOR house overhaul trying to get everything organized and get rid of things we don’t use or need. I’ve realized that with #3 on the way, I am going to go crazy if things aren’t a great deal more in order around here. Things are progressing but veeeerrrry slowly with interruptions from the kids and just life in general but I hope to get there before the baby comes, especially since we are planning a home birth this time around.

Until next time, I leave you with a couple of pics of the boys.

First Henry painting the airplane he got for Christmas from Auntie Elisha and Uncle Dan. Notice the concentration always shown with the tongue!

And Jack, our little camera lover who is actually wearing his Christmas Eve pajama pants which I made for each of the boys. He love to stack things or put things inside of containers (the toy cow in the cup)

October 15, 2008

Well, it seems that fall is officially upon us. The chilly weather has put me in the mood for getting my Christmas gift list tackled but that is making it difficult for me to stay motivated to finish my canning and harvesting……especially with the beautifully icky weather. I just want to sit and knit or crochet or sew but I know I must instead go to the produce stand to get apples for applesauce and pick what’s left of my beans and zucchini to put up. It was not a good bean year for us. That cold snap in June really made some of our stuff come on late. I’m not sure if my corn is going to make it. It’s holding on for dear life but I really don’t know if the rain and wind we have been getting are going to allow the ears to mature not to mention the mini-frosts we had last week that destroyed my dahlias and my beautiful squash plants.

I haven’t been absent from the crafting dept however. I grab moments in whatever spare time that I have.I have completed several small crocheted animals and a baby hat for baby shower gifts (would the women in my church stop having babies already so I can get caught up on my gifts!) Both the hedgehog and the bunny were from this book which I love but I also made the hippo from this book and love it as well. The projects are so simple and quick. Amigurumi is one of my new favorite things. That and nutmeg in my mochas and cappaccinos.

I made a pair of baby shoes from this pattern. I loved how easy these were to sew and they came out so doggone cute! I just used fabric scraps that I had from other projects and the corderoy soles were from an old pair of pants. I’m going to try to enlarge the pattern so I can make some for Jack since one of his loves are things on his feet.

And speaking of Jack, the little guy had a birthday on Friday. I can’t believe he is a year old already. In the last month he has gone from baby to little boy in leaps and bounds. We made him a truck cake for his birthday.

It’s not perhaps the prettiest cake by far but I had my reasons for not going all out as this was its demise.

Happy Birthday Baby Jack!

I’ve had my coffee and the fire is crackling away. Now on to that Christmas to-do list!

August 6, 2008

So here it’s been another month plus since posting but a busy month it has been. Towards the end of July we went camping on Orcas Island. We attended a music festival called Woodsong that a family over there puts on every year. Jim and Henry had a lot of fun. It was a bit more difficult for Jack and I since Jack is such a light sleeper and has to be put in his crib in the other room when it’s bedtime in order for him to fall asleep…..can’t really do that when there are people sleeping in tents all around you at one o’clock in the morning when he decides to wake up. So the first night we ended up in the van and he did better the second night but still not great. We left late Saturday evening so that we could get at least one good nights sleep that weekend and sleep we did. We did have fun at the beach and on the ferry ride and at the farmers market in Eastsound though. Then we had company come out from Chicago (friends of Jim’s from college) and this last weekend we catered a wedding for my cousin, Anna. Unfortunately, no pictures were taken of the food but I think it was the best one we have done. It was super simple but Jim tiered the table under the table cloth and it added a lot. I made 350 plus mini cheese quiches, Jim made about the same amount of mini tomato basil pizzas and we both made a whole bunch of tortilla wraps. In addition, we had fruit and veggie trays and bread with several different spreads. We sliced the baguettes and scattered the bread around the bowls of bread, brie, and spreads and used grapes and whole baguettes as decoration on the tables. I was beat but Anna and Dave were super happy with the food so that made it all worth it. Lucky for us, I have very helpful siblings who helped with cutting stuff Saturday morning and hauling it all out to the tables.

Remember the pea planting from a couple of posts ago? Our peas have come on in full force so Henry and I were out picking today.

We asked Henry for about 4 days what he was going to name his kitten and it started with the answer “I don know” and then we started giving him ideas with him giving us the answer “noooooo” with a laugh every time. Then he started giving names and saying no and finally we went from Freddy to Michael to Freddy Puma Pina to Freddy Michael and back to just Freddy Puma. It’s goofy but cute since Henry named him himself.

You find the most interesting bugs in the summer. I went to let Zoey (our dog) out and came across this moth on the kitchen wall and had to take pictures. They aren’t great and I knew they wouldn’t be but I have never seen a moth like this before. I wonder if it’s one of those bugs that changes to the color of whatever it’s resting on since it was sitting on our green wall.

I realize this post is all over the place but my head is kind of all over the place tonight so….ya. Here is another random picture, this one of the gorgeous sunset we had tonight. Cows live in this field and sometimes the skyline will be dotted with silhouettes of cows but tonight it was just field. Picture is a bit fuzzy but it was so pretty, I had to take a picture. I really need to get a better camera one of these days!

And last but not least, only because I don’t want to leave the boy out, here is what Jack does while Henry and I are outside in the mornings.

June 26, 2008

So Saturday was the first day we have been able to go to garage sales since Jim’s ankle surgery a little over a month ago and it was actually a good day. Sometimes you go and you find nothing but this time we spent about $12 and got some really great stuff. I was so excited about it I took pictures to post and then forgot and was just going through my camera and remembered.I found a tree skirt for 50 cents. Can you believe it? I love the country-ish/homemadeness of it. There is a little button that slips through a ribbon on the opposite side to connect it around the tree trunk.

We always try to give some people homemade cookies and other goodies for which I picked up the tins but I might have to keep the one on the left for myself.

We were looking for some plain shiny red balls in the after Christmas sales this year but all we could find were the frosted ones. For a buck, I picked up a box of 12, 3 of which are pictured on the Christmas plate to add to my collection of Christmas dishes.

Another dish, this one for my teacup collection. This I think was my favorite find of the day. I love the colors and the picture on it.

We also picked up the mini-loaf pan for 50 cents. It makes 6 small loaves and I thought Henry would have fun making little loaves of zucchini or banana bread. I made the “mistake” of letting him help me make pumpkin pie (which he called crust pie) last week and now any time he hears me make a noise in the kitchen, he comes running to “help”. Cute when it’s wanted but when I’m just feeding the dog and he doesn’t believe me or I’m trying to make dinner fast, it can come with a bit of a fit from the boy.

And last but not least, we found an older gentleman who was selling these wooden toys that he made. (Pardon the crappy pictures). These are by far not the best that he had, however they are the operable ones that we could let Henry play with and not worry about him breaking off any of the detailing. He had some really cool trains all detailed out with “logs” on the trailers and detailed semi-trucks and old style cars. He also had a seal that you would pull and when he moved a ball set on a peg that went down into his nose would bounce up and down.

A guy a couple of doors down also had some woodwork out however his was a bit more detailed and not stuff you would buy for your kids. Amazing tractors and cranes with working parts but the prices were huge (understandably with the amount of time that had to go into them) and they were things that you would buy to set up on a shelf, not to play with.

Afterwards we came home and Jack slept while I finished putting in my garden and Jim and Henry went back into town to watch the soap box derby. All in all, it was a very good Saturday!

June 6, 2008

So here is another thing I did back in March. I had orginally bought this craft box at Michael’s to be a box to hold paper dolls for my niece, Gentry for Christmas. The dolls were WAY smaller than I had anticipated so I had to get a smaller box for them, thus I was left with this one to hold for that project that just needed a wooden box. That came about 3 months later when I decided to make a Barbie bed for Gentry’s birthday. I used fabric I had bought at a second-hand store for seventy-nine cents to make a quilt and matching pillows. Well, once I got going I couldn’t stop and before you knew it I had bolster pillows made from some of my quilting scraps, a sheet made from some fabric samples the interior design firm in Jim’s office had given me, mattress made from those same samples and I decided to pull out the box to use as a bed frame. I roped Jim into cutting out a couple of magazine pictures to glue into the lid so it looks like pictures hanging on the wall and walla…..a bed in a box.

A 1 hour project turned into 2 1/2 hours but it was fun. Maybe it’s a good thing I don’t have any girls….

On another note I have new favorite laundry detergent……that I made myself. I have been trying to save money and at the same time do things more naturally/organically and I found this recipe on the internet. I must admit, I was skeptical but it was so cheap to make I figured I should give it a try. I splurged a bit and bought a $2 bar of 99% natural rosemary mint soap instead of using the 33 cent bar of Ivory that the recipe called for. I have used it this week to wash our laundry and it works great. My clothes feel and smell clean. It has kind of a weird consistancy….my sister was over yesterday and she just kept sticking her fingers in it. I was trying to figure out what she was doing and then I realized she was trying to figure out what it felt like and I told her it was frog eggs and she agreed. (We used to go out and catch frogs in our pond and take their eggs and put them in buckets of water so we could see the tadpoles when they hatched.) Don’t let that turn you off of it…..it just feels like them doesn’t look like them. It works great and I have 110-ish loads of laundry detergent for three or four dollars as opposed to the twelve something I usually spend to do the same amount.

June 3, 2008

Keeping up with this blog it turns out is not my forte. I think about posting often but it’s always for “after I finish folding the clothes” or “after I get this diaper changed”, etc. Obviously that never happens. It’s been a busy couple of months around here. I did get the sweater I was talking about on my last post done but no pics because I finished it at the baby shower. Cut that one close! I put on a baby shower for my sister and her new baby boy and these are the invites that I made.

I cut a triangle out of cardstock, folded it into a diaper shape and snipped the corners off for the leg holes. Then I punched two holes in one fold of the diaper and inserted a diaper pin. The invitation is printed on paper and glued to the inside. They were super easy and I really like the way they turned out.

We have been doing a bit of gardening around here too. Henry and I planted peas a month or so ago (only 4 plants made an appearance so I think the birds liked them. I have since replanted.)

I had another baby shower to attend in May for my sister-in-law and I actually finished this gift in time. The booties are the Classic Cashmere Booties (not made in cashmere) and the hat is the Baby’s Beanie Hat both from my standby baby gift book, Simple Knits for Cherished Babies by Erika Knight. The butterfly is from a hand sewing pattern purchased from Hilary at Wee Wonderfuls (they changed wordpress and I can’t figure out how to add a link but she’s one of the blogs on my sidebar).

Today is nasty and rainy and my son is stir crazy so in between loads of laundry, he and I did a bit of crafting. He is really into David when we read him his Bible so we made masks for him to be a lion, the sheep that the lion is going to eat, and David when he fights of the lion.

He wanted to make and ark and Noah but I didn’t have it in me so we improvised. We had some stickers that Henry got for Christmas from his cousins in France so we made and ark and I let him put the animal stickers all over it. He is super fascinated with animals right now and loves the Planet Earth series, which I don’t feel quite so bad letting him watch since it’s educational. He was going to get glue everywhere if he tried to play with the masks so I deterred him with an “animal movie”. He clutched his Noah picture and took it with him to the couch.

His request was the episode where the lions kill the elephant. Should I be worried that my son is morbid? I guess he’s just a boy! I gotta go fold clothes. Boys go through so many clothes and I know this is only the beginning. I remember the mud caked jeans that my brothers used to bring in……uggh!

March 20, 2008

So it’s been awhile since I’ve posted anything. It’s been pretty busy around here. I have been watching my sister’s kids 2-3 days a week and then we have had nasty colds and stomach bugs come through…..I am so glad that spring is finally here…..or is it? It’s so stinkin’ damp and cold outside right now it doesn’t feel like spring at all. But there are daffodils in the yard and the trees across the street are starting to bud so it must be coming soon. Hopefully with some time outside, people will start to get healthy and stay that way. Even with the business, I have managed to get a few things accomplished besides laundry, dishes, and taking care of kids. Not as much as I would like but a few things. Right now I’m pushing on a sweater to get done by next weekend for a baby shower. We’ll see if it happens. Here are the things I recently finished.

A monkey for Henry’s birthday. I made one like this for Henry’s cousin, William, for Christmas and both of them have been huge hits. William’s came with a cape since he is very into super heroes right now. This pattern came from a book I checked out at the library called Knitted Toys by Fiona McTague.

A hat and bear for the baby of a friend of Jim’s from college. Jeremy loves orange and their wedding was actually orange and hot pink since his wife likes pink. It sounds awful but it actually worked out really well. So anyhoo, since they had a boy, we thought we would send them something orange. Both patterns are from Simple Knits for Cherished Baby by Erika. Knight

And these are some desperately needed kitchen towels that I embroidered. All of our towels but two we have had since our wedding (3 1/2 yrs ago) and between everyday use and our dog deciding they were chew toys, our supply had either hit the rag bag or needed to. I freehanded the embroidery on these and decided to go with a theme….as you can see rather than all the same thing.